


i want you to fuck up my nights.

by shewitches



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, dennis reynolds is a mess but i love him dearly and so does mac, seriously the lightest angst, way too many commas ?, which is valid and y'all need to shut the fuck up!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 09:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20833346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewitches/pseuds/shewitches
Summary: He thinks, maybe, Dennis might be jealous.  And he thinks, maybe, he’s a shitty person for enjoying it.  He doesn’t want to enjoy Dennis squirming on the other side of the bar — but it seems to take a lot to make Dennis squirm, and it’s so fucking satisfying.  So, maybe, he’s gonna keep playing into it.or, a guy at the bar asks Mac out & makes Dennis finally own up to his big gay feelings.





	i want you to fuck up my nights.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't own it's always sunny, or the characters, but i do own this fic & this writing. please don't post this on goodreads (apparently that's a thing) or wattpadd or where ever else people write stuff. title is from ruin my life by zara larsson, aka the song i replayed while writing this on my phone in bed. sorry for any mistakes! i've never written for this fandom before, so i'm feeling a little timid to post this.

He thinks, maybe, Dennis might be jealous. And he thinks, maybe, he’s a shitty person for enjoying it. He doesn’t want to enjoy Dennis squirming on the other side of the bar — but it seems to take a lot to make Dennis squirm, and it’s so fucking satisfying. So, maybe, he’s gonna keep playing into it. 

“Call me sometime,” The random dude says, and his number is on Mac’s hand in sharpie and it’s almost too fucking satisfying to walk to the other end of the bar and see Dennis glance down at his hands. It’s not the way Mac’s wanted him to look at his hands for what feels like half a fucking century now, but it’ll do. It’ll work. He can make this work for him. 

“So our plan to get you romance. That’s working, huh?” Dennis asks, and it almost doesn’t sound like a question. It sounds accusatory and it makes Mac grateful that he’s learned to speak Dennis over the years. 

“Looks like it,” He replies, washing out a glass before filling it with beer. “He seemed cool.” 

“Is cool what we’re going for?” 

“What else would I be going for?” 

He waits, and he can see Dennis deciding if he’s even going to answer that. He doesn’t know when they decided to start doing this weird ass gay dance, but he’s leading. Mac: 1, Dennis: 0. 

“I just always pictured you with someone a little more —,” Dennis stops, hesitates, then starts again. “Interesting.” 

Interesting. What a fucking word choice. 

“So you’re saying I can’t get anyone cool?” Mac jokes, and he can’t help but smile over at Dennis. Dennis looks conflicted — and eventually he lands on a response. 

“Have you seen your dating history?” 

Which, fair. 

“Hey — that was straight Mac. Gay Mac is here to party and have a sweet, sweet love story.” 

That actually makes Dennis roll his eyes, but he won’t stop glancing at Mac’s hands and it makes him want to wash the number off — but he can’t. He’s a bad person for wanting to hold it in front of his face, isn’t he? Fuck. He wishes he cared more about being a good person than he does about finally getting the answer he wants. 

Sharpie guy is lingering at the end of the bar, and it isn’t packed, so Mac makes a choice. He might regret it later — but a choice has to be made, okay? He has to know if he’s losing it. Dennis has told him time and time again that this isn’t going to happen — but the hand staring, and the jealous glances, and all of it is too much for him. He needs to know. 

“I didn’t get your name,” Mac starts, and he isn’t even listening as he leans against the bar and the dude talks. Tyler? Kyler? Kevin? Something vaguely annoying comes out of his mouth, but he’s interested, and it’s obvious, and it’s getting the job done. Hopefully. “If you wanna hang around, I’ll be done in 30.” 

He won’t be. Hopefully. Whatever. They’re shitty people, and he doesn’t give a fuck. He turns around and the look Dennis is giving him is an answer more than anything — but it’s all he’s had for years. The push and pull of Mac-and-Dennis is making him lose hair, and he likes his hair. 

“You good if Dee helps you close tonight?” He asks, and he just wants Dennis to say no. He wants Dennis to take the leap. 

“Why not?” 

Well. Cool. That’s the answer he needs, then. He isn’t sure why he thought it would be any different this time just because he was finally embracing being gay, and Dennis was helping him. His life isn’t a fucking romcom. He feels stupid, but he’s felt stupid for a long time now. It was never going to work with Dennis, right? 

The date with the guy — his name is actually Tyler, and he becomes deemed Terrible Tyler in Mac’s head — ends early, and it’s a shitty end to a shitty night. 

Seriously. Worst date. He’s pretty sure the universe doesn’t want him to be with anyone else, or maybe it’s just him, because he spends the whole night comparing Tyler to Dennis and getting mad that Tyler does stupid shit. Who holds the door open these days? And why won’t he be sarcastic, or funny? It all feels too serious. The worst part is the bad attempt at a kiss. Mac actually ends up physically swerving away from it and running inside like his apartment is on fire, and he feels bad for one second before it fades. 

Whatever. He’ll get over it. 

He doesn’t expect to come home and find Dennis drunk in the kitchen. It reminds him so much of them when they were younger that it shocks his system for a second, but he recovers easily. 

“You’re still up,” He says easily as he throws his keys on the table. 

“You’re home early,” Dennis replies, and Mac sits down at the table with him and steals his beer with practiced ease. 

“Shitty date,” He says with a shrug. “He wasn’t interesting.” 

Using that word makes Dennis meet his eyes for the first time in what feels like days, even if it was only hours. Fucking finally. 

“You didn’t let me pick him,” Dennis responds, and he sounds a little more like himself. Not really him, but the practiced version. 

“So I can’t date dudes who give me their numbers?” 

“I have a process of approval. You threw off the whole algorithm,” Dennis responds, stealing his beer back for a sip and passing it back. 

They have an entire pack in the fucking fridge. He’s never wanted to kiss someone so much in his life. Mac doesn’t know what to say that isn’t going to get him rejected again, so he lets the silence stretch. He can only take it so many times before he snaps. 

“I’m gonna head to bed. You can tell me about that algorithm tomorrow so I can avoid another date with Terrible Tyler,” Mac says, and he tries to stop himself from sounding dejected as he does. 

He’s walking past Dennis when he feels Dennis grab his wrist, and he gets it. The romcom moment. It’s stupid as fuck, and it’s annoying, because Tyler tried to kiss him and he felt nothing but Dennis touches his wrist and he feels like someone punched him in the solar plexus, and he feels everything he’s supposed to be feeling for people who _ want him too _. 

He stops, and makes the choice he’s not making the leap. 

Dennis turns his hand palm up, and Mac realizes he’s staring at the phone number he never got rid of. It’s faded from washing glasses at the bar and washing his hands, but still there. A reminder that people are interested in him. People who aren’t Dennis. People who can take the leap. 

Dennis drops his wrist like it burnt him, and Mac audibly sighs. 

He’s in his room when Dennis comes in, without knocking, and he looks like he’s been pulling his hair. It’s out of place and it actually looks good. Mac wishes he was the one that had messed it up, not for the first time. 

“I need the phone number gone,” Dennis says, and Mac furrows his brows. “The one on your hand.” 

“What?” 

“It’s bugging the shit out of me. I need it gone.” 

A beat. Two more. 

“Why?” 

Mac feels like he’s standing in the woods with an animal. Maybe a bear, or something less terrifying like a deer but he still can’t move. He doesn’t want to scare Dennis, and he’s fucking terrified to breathe the wrong way because this entire thing feels like a 20 year long fever dream. 

“Because he just gave you his number,” Dennis explains, and Mac waits for the rest of the answer, but that’s it. That’s the entire thing. 

“Okay, and?” 

“And you kept it.” 

And maybe that’s the point. That it isn’t about people being interested in Mac, it’s about Mac being interested in them. Understanding Dennis is like someone dumping a two-thousand piece puzzle in your lap and all of the pieces are hard edge pieces at first — but Mac has found the center pieces over the years, and he’s pieced together the puzzle that is Dennis Reynolds. 

It doesn’t look perfect to everyone, but who the fuck cares. He’s working on it, has been working on it for years, and it's the best fucking puzzle in the world even if it annoys the shit out of him. It’s his. Or he wants it to be. 

“It’s permanent marker, Dennis.” 

It should be funny, but it just makes Dennis start pacing around the room, so it’s decidedly not funny. The air in the room becomes heavy in a bad way, like when a thunderstorm is about to hit and you have to decide if you want to run inside or enjoy the storm to stay on your course. Fight or flight. 

Mac chooses fight, obviously, because he isn’t the same person he was twenty years ago and Dennis looks like he’s about to bolt. One of them has to choose fight and he doesn’t want it to be him but fuck if it’s going to be Dennis. 

“What should I have done?” Mac asks, because he needs to know what’s going on in his brain. He needs to understand. 

“Said no,” Dennis says, like it makes total sense, like they’ve had this conversation before. And they 100% haven’t. He’s so god damn confused, and he can’t say that to Dennis or they’ll be back at square one and Mac will scream. 

_ We are not a couple, Mac. _

“Because it goes against your algorithm,” Mac tries, because he’s tired of asking why and getting cryptic answers and trying to piece it together, and Dennis looks at him like he has five heads or like he slapped him. 

It takes two steps for Dennis to cross the room, and then Dennis has his hands on Mac’s face and is kissing him with enough force that it almost knocks him over. It does knock the air out of his lungs, but that’s because he’s so surprised that Dennis finally made a move. Mac is frozen in his spot, and he isn’t sure what the fuck to do with his hands. No one tells you what to do with your hands when this finally happens. 

Dennis is kissing him, and Mac is frozen, and his brain isn’t catching up until it finally does and his hands move to pull Dennis closer by the waist. He kisses him back, finally, and he feels Dennis relax into it instantly. Dennis is a good weight against him, warm and solid, and Mac can’t resist the urge to pull him down onto the bed. Dennis goes easily, and he fits between Mac’s legs like a dream, or like something equally as cheesy. 

It’s a good kiss. A lot better than whatever kiss he would have had with Terrible Tyler. He pulls back, and he has to ask. Just to be an asshole. 

“You saw him try to kiss me, didn’t you?” He waits, and Dennis stares, and neither of them are saying anything for a second. It feels like an admission it itself, just because he knows Dennis. Another puzzle piece clicks in his head. “You were watching us.” 

“Shut up, Mac,” Dennis says, and he’s kissing him again, because he can do that now, and how is Mac going to argue that? 

Mac is pretty sure all of this is a fever dream, and he’s fine with it. He’s had wet dreams like this before. This one feels pretty real, and he likes it. 

“Was it when he slipped me tongue, or,” Mac tries, just wanting to test a theory, because he has to know if Dennis is actually jealous, and Dennis actually bites his jaw and mumbles something about him not even getting a peck goodnight in retaliation. Yeah, not a fever dream. 

It’s a few minutes later, when they’re kissing and Dennis is hard against him, that Dennis brings up the number again. “Seriously, get rid of this.” 

“Consider it gone.”

**Author's Note:**

> for ki, who got me into watching this show (i'm sensing a pattern) and ruins my life daily by sending me headcanons and gifsets. love you to the moon & back.


End file.
